My desire to please won out over my overwhelming laziness and I updated my menu post with recipes. If there’s something that I still haven’t linked to, it’s because I just cook it without a recipe -For example “Chard” is just Rinse chard, chop up, throw in a pot with garlic sauteed in olive oil, add a little water, and Done. Although the chard at the grocery store looked awful so we’re having collards instead so already I am living a giant giant lie.

When we first started this gluten free thing, we ate A LOT of beans and cheese and meat.

We still eat a lot of meat because that’s what keeps Mr. E full, but as we sail towards the New Year and a slew of resolutions, I really need to get back in the practice of eating lots of fruit and veggies. Here’s the next two weeks worth of meals we’ll be eating, and hopefully they’ll help with Operation Less Tight Jeans and Operation Stuff Fewer Chips in My Face. I’m highlighting veggies in green. My goal is five fruits and vegetables a day, and at dinner to make the biggest portion of food on my plate a vegetable.

Because we’re losers and have no money and have to make our own fun, we always joke around that Mr. E is a robot.

But seriously, sometimes I wonder.

The man is just too nice to be real.

He likes talking to old people. He calls his mother four times a week. He is the best dad I’ve ever seen. I’ll look over and see him, sitting with Eli, their heads together, playing some silent secret game or giving each other squirrel neck bites for the ninth hour in a row crammed into a seat on United Airlines, and I’ll be so grateful that such a person exists in this world, and that I get to be married to him and that Eli gets to have him for a father.

He’s so smart, it kind of makes me nervous sometimes. We’re not always interested in the same things, but he’s so enthralled with the things he loves, birds and license plates and screechy music, and trees and ham, that it makes me interested in those things too.

He makes me laugh a thousand times a day.

My whole day, I spend waiting for him to come home, so I can laugh again.

I can’t sleep unless I am curled up next to him.

Dogs and babies and old ladies and lesbians, they all love him.

He holds my hand and helps me leap and he’s never not been there for me when I’ve stumbled. I am not kidding when I say that I think I owe my life to this man. I certainly can’t imagine it without him.

He’s just so fabulous that sometimes the only logical conclusion I can make is that he’s not quite human.

Please please please please please please please let this not be the year that I spend Christmas in the Denver Airport. Please.

Please.

However, just so you know. If you DO strand me in the Denver Airport on Christmas Day, my dear Chicago, I fully intend to make the best of it. After all, there is a reason that Bloody Marys come in Christmas colors.

I’m taking a blog hiatus for about a week or so, but please cross your fingers that I don’t return with many stories involving curse words and United Airlines.

7:26 AM – Cuddle with child and large stuffed turtle. Mentally compose odious and long winded blog post about how all the sacrifices and loss of self and identity and the soul crushing boredom of stay at home mom dom have all been worth it for these 25 minutes. Wonder who you will offend with post about how great stay at home momdom is, decide against long winded and odious blog post about the joys of cuddling. Ponder how you would cuddle with oldest child if you had another. Mourn son’s lost childhood for 15 minutes even though he is still an only child.

9:20 AM Empty trash while using body as a wedge to keep toddler in house and dog out of house. Fail on all counts.

9:25 AM Remind toddler that this is not France, and if we want to go outside, we have to wear pants.

9:30 AM Re wash laundry which has been left to sit in washer over night.

9:35 AM Remember when laundry is done that you did not put it in the dryer because the dryer is full of clean clothes. Curse. Do not under any circumstances empty the dryer.

9:40 AM Check email.

9:45 AM Become sucked in by Hanna Andersson 70% off sale. Decide son must have thermo blocking fleece jacket. Search for correct size despite bizarre Swedish numbering size system. Attempt to quiet child’s hysterical whining because you are daring to use the internet. Admonish child that you are shopping for him! Note that child is total ingrate and does not deserve thermo blocking fleece jacket from Hanna Andersson.

10:00 AM Note suspicious stinky odor in air.

10:05 AM Change poopy diaper. Sing several increasingly idiotic and desperate songs in order to distract child while diaper is being changed, in order to prevent child from 1. eating poop 2. wiping poop on self and mother and 3. kicking mother in the face.

11:18 Attempt to pre make! a dinner which will use up all undesirable vegetables left in refrigerator.

11:20 AM Note to child that he will not enjoy raw eggplant.

11:21 AM Give child slice of raw eggplant.

11:21 AM Note to child that he will not enjoy raw eggplant, even if it has been peeled.

11:22 AM Peel slice of raw eggplant.

11:23 AM Clean up raw eggplant from floor. Note to child that he does indeed not like raw eggplant.

11:24 AM Talk self down from desire to pack for trip early. Give self a little lecture and remind self that self does not need to worry about packing for christmas trip to chicago until tomorrow night, and that self does not need to obsess about packing for nineteen extra days.

11:25 AM Obsess about packing. Begin making lists.

11: 30 AM Rewrite lists.

11: 35 AM Wonder if self should remove clothes self is currently wearing in order to wash them so self can pack them. Realize self would be naked. Consider doing it anyway.

11:40 AM Realize child will probably freeze to death in Chicago as child does not own fleece thermo blocking windwall Hanna Andersson jacket. Wonder if calling up grandparents and demanding they purchase fleece windwall Hanna Andersson jacket would be innapropriate.

11:45 AM Call husband at work to tell him child has no thermo blocking fleece windwall jacket! Poo poo husbands reminder of fleece PULLOVER, as fleece PULL OVER clearly inferior to fleece jacket.